


dreams and starlight

by bladeCleaner



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Pre-Sburb, Young
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 07:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a troll's sacred rite of passage to learn about the stars. A young Equius begins to want something more than just fragments for a legacy looking up into the beautiful night sky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dreams and starlight

**Author's Note:**

> Promptbound Fill: equius, stars.

When he is two sweeps old, Aurthour teaches him about the stars. Serket isn’t home that night(with that loud, screeching Pyrope again, he thinks), so there’s finally some peace and quiet. He wakes up at the peak of sunset, orange still edging the horizon into a fiery line. Aurthour’s hand is on his shoulder, nudging him gently from the daze of sopor and then quickly galloping away as Equius flails his arms back and forth as per usual.

His respiteblock is littered with bits and pieces of faulty wiring from deconstructed machines. He is young. The only thing he knows- with a certainty too addictive to shake- is destruction. There are bits and pieces everywhere from old star-ships driven by adolescent, adrenaline-swallowing, suicidal helmsmen; too in love with speed and the concept of their own invincibility to stop. They are also too young to know that desire is a dangerous thing, especially when they have no control. They crash nearby into fields. They are monuments of utter madness; it is so very, very depraved. But he still picks up the skeletons of their smashed hulls and tears them to pieces. He wants to learn how they work. There’s a morbid fascination in peeling back the metal like it is simply film and seeing what’s underneath.

He has been bred from birth to believe that all he can ever do is wreck and ruin, in the service of others or their detriment.

But tonight is not a night for that. Tonight the jade and rose moons hide themselves away in the void of night-midst’s veil and the stars come out in full. Aurthour has left several glasses of hoofbeast milk on the table next to the wires. Equius wipes himself dry with a towel, puts on his clothes and downs them all. There’s glass shards on the floor and they glitter like diamonds. He leaves them there, sparkling. Aurthour will clean them up.

Tonight is a perfect night to watch the stars. The Empire holds them sacred for it is said in official texts that they all are under the Empress’ command. For the furthered glory of Alternia she traverses them all to make the planet even stronger than before.

But more importantly; there is a rumour, a fairytale whispered through every crack and corner, passed on from rustbloods up to the Empress-in-training herself; that the bravest, strongest trolls would have a constellation to themselves should they please her enough. It is considered a troll’s rite of passage to learn about the stars. At two he does not fully understand yet, but he believes- that the Empress is capable to wave a gold-gilded hand and simply re-align the cosmos to her liking.

Aurthour tells him of the anatomy of the stars. They are luminous masses of plasma held together by gravity, given their glow by the thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium within its core. He explains that they appear to be fixed in their locations because of their immense distance; it takes several minutes for their light to reach their eyes. Eventually he moves on to the formation of red giants and black holes, but for once, when he gets to the destructive part of the lesson Equius’ focus has slipped away like water in a stream. He’s much more interested in repeating the names of the constellations to himself. There’s the magnificent Hoofbeast, the big Trident and the Four Quadrants. They’re beautiful. For a moment he’s there up in that endless yawning of space, drifting, everything empty and quiet and tranquil; then he thinks about the chaos of the crash of chemicals and the e%humation of helium within glowing spheres. 

He toys with the idea that he could one day have a constellation named after him. He wants, more than that, to be able to have the Empress’ power; he imagines that she can pluck one star out of the heavens with foreclaw and thumb, her skin thick and strong enough to withstand the acrimony of the burn. He wants to be as strong. He wants to take a few of those amazing lights, twinkling shiny teeth that never break, string them into a necklace and give it to someone he loves, to see them smile.

_(He has not yet met Aradia Megido. When they clash he will know that certain kind of despair that comes with thinking he can never fulfil a wish. With Nepeta Leijon he does not even think of pearls, for she smiles around him all the time. It is as simple as breathing in air to think of her smile.)_

His thumbs cross over each other in a dance. He is watching the stars twinkle, slowly awakening with each passing hour. He is alone, bathing in starlight, as Aurthour finishes his lecture and slips away to clear away the glass. His clear irises take in the sky with wonder. No one has ever told him he is beautiful. In that moment, though, stripped of all pretence, heart still unburdened by the heavier obligations of his caste; should someone see him now they would think him lovely. He is thunderstruck by the beauty of starfields and cosmos large enough to make his head spin, his head full of electricity and wiring and connections snapping like livewire. His eyes are gleaming with the fullness of the night and without knowing a small smile curves around his lips. He still has all his original teeth and none of his eye-bags. The strong one, the one chosen to ruin and wreck; awed to silence and peace by the stars. In this moment he is truly lovely-and he will never know it.

He holds up one innocent hand up to the sky and imagines himself taking the heavens into his STRONG palms, capable of making instead of breaking.


End file.
